Challenges in Implementing Employee Empowerment: A Multiple-Case Study

Empirical evidence indicates a strong relationship between empowerment practice and innovativeness, but many firms failed in applying empowerment practice due to all kinds of challenges. This research aims to increase the managers' awareness of the challenges in empowerment practices, to discover the common challenges and to provide suggestions to those managers who plan to implement employee empowerment in their organizations. In order to get a deep understanding of these challenges, multiple-case study method was used. Two cases, including both a successful programme and a failed one, were analyzed and discussed in this research. The framework used in the analysis process was developed from the review of the literature. It turned out that most of the findings were as expected, but some of them extended the knowledge from the literature as well. Key findings include (1) the understanding of employee empowerment is highly influenced by the organization's attitude to employees; (2) employees' understanding can be easily influenced by the empowerment programme; (3) the main challenge is 'unsupportive top management', followed by 'the fear to take a risk'. Apart from analyzing each case individually, some comparisons have also been made between the two cases, which further developed the management reflective thinking of the challenges. Based on the findings, six pieces of advice for empowerment practice were concluded for the managers in a wider range of organizations.